Running the OpenThread Border Router on OrangePI Zero3

Open thread already has excellent guides on running the Border Router software on a Raspberry PI with the Nordic nRF52840 dongle as the radio co-processor.

Since the SBCs lack a Thread radio, we make use of a Thread capable MCU board as this radio co-processor, flashed with a specific firmware ot-rcp.bin (available on the OpenThread Github for various boards) that communicate with the host application via the Spinel protocol.

I took a slightly cost effective approach with the Orange PI Zero3 and EasyIot ZB-GW04 (EFR32MG21) based dongle. Here are my notes and workarounds in this approach to achieve a working solution.

As of this writing the Armbian and DietPI builds have a bug in detecting memory on the Zero3. My 1GB RAM board is sometimes detected as having 2GB wrongly (causing random crashes). We'll need to reboot until it is correctly detected, check by running free -h. More info here.

I installed the DietPI port for this board onto an SD card and booted. Now to run the OpenThread Border Router host software I used Podman instead of Docker:

sudo apt install podman vim

We install vim as there are no editors installed by default. We need to modify the /etc/containers/registries.conf file to include:

unqualified-search-registries = ["docker.io"]

This way we get a docker like default repo resolution. Next run:

sudo podman pull openthread/otbr:latest

Plug in your dongle and check which device is associated (via dmesg). In our case it should be dev/ttyUSB0. Make sure it is re-flashed as per the preparation section below! Finally run (making sure to replace the left ttyUSB0 with your instance):

sudo podman run --sysctl net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=0 --sysctl net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding=1 --sysctl net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1 -p 8080:80 --dns=127.0.0.1 -it --volume /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0 --privileged openthread/otbr

Now the web interface is available on dietpi:8080.

You can also follow along with the Simulated RCP. Note that the building step takes ages on the PI Zero3!

Prepare the EasyIot ZB-GW04 dongle

This repo has all you need to reflash the dongle to a ot-rcp. In essence I had to run (make sure you match the firmware version to the indication on the PCB!):

universal-silabs-flasher --device /dev/ttyUSB0 flash --firmware ot-rcp-v2.4.5.0-zb-gw04-1v2-230400.gbl --allow-cross-flashing

Verify with:

universal-silabs-flasher --device /dev/ttyUSB0 --probe-method spinel --spinel-baudrate 230400 probe

Sniffing Packets

<TODO>